Once upon a time, in a land, far, far away, there were two mobile operating systems. One of them was designed for mobile from the ground up; the other was trying really hard to copy its older, desktop brother. One was limited in functionality, inflexible and lacked multitasking, but was very efficient, fast, and easy to use. The other had everything and the kitchen sink, was very flexible and could multitask, but had a steep learning curve, was inconsistent, and not particularly pretty.

Was NFC support in the OS really the best way to spend Google's limited Android Software R&D budget (it must be limited, else I'd expect a different SDK and development tools experience for starters... more attention to bugs being reported, better TOOLS and SDK web sites, etc...)?

I'm sorry, but I very much prefer Android's Reference to iOS's. Much easier to navigate. Though if you're not used to JavaDoc style documentation, I can understand the issue but I do not share it. And Eclipse is Eclipse.

And having Diane, Romain and Xavier on the android-developers Google Group is just marvelous. Does Apple allow their highest ranked developers help app developers?

As for API bugs, Android is pretty solid. There are bugs, but they are cleaned up with new releases.

And I share your concern about the time float, though Galaxy Nexus seems to be much better with it.

Why will not iOS have something like J2ME CHAPI? Really, why are all "Share" buttons result in such horrible experience on iOS. While being wonderfully easy on Androoid - a list of applications that handle sharing. And as Thom said - can the URL https://twitter.com/#!/YouTube/status/149281734347857920 result in opening of your Twitter client and show that status on iOS? At least in latest incarnation.